Uganda Ruling Small Victory in Gay Struggle

I met him in a cramped law firm located right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Uganda’s crowded capital Kampala.

He had squeezed himself in the corner of the dingy law office as if he were running from an invisible enemy.

They were only two occupants in the room; the lawyer and himself. I had entered unannounced. The man in the corner was startled. 

The lawyer, John Francis Onyango, grinned and said, “Can I finish with this client please? Thank you.” 

As I went out, I heard the scared small man, wearing faded blue jeans and a striped shirt, ask, “Who is he?”

Unknown to him, I was also asking myself: who is he? Why is he so uneasy and scared?

I later learnt that he was David Kato, a homosexual and a litigation officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda, SMUG. On its website, SMUG, describes itself as, “a coalition of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) human rights organisations”.

Homosexuality in Uganda is already illegal. But, as if that was not enough, in October 2009, David Bahati, a Ugandan legislator, tabled before parliament an anti-homosexuality bill.

The bill is still under discussion, but the tabling of it thrust Uganda and Bahati into the international limelight, mostly generating condemnation from western leaders and local and international human rights organisations.

According to local media reports, this intense international attention prompted president Yoweri Museveni to ask those advocating for the bill to “go slow” as it had become a major foreign policy issue.

As the debate on the homosexuality bill intensified, in came a new player: Rolling Stone (unrelated to the American magazine of the same name) a hitherto relatively unknown local tabloid (circulation is no more than a couple of thousand).

The magazine had published a series of anti-gay articles. Among them was one whose headline screamed “Hang them”, above a series of photos and personal details of people that it claimed were gay. Among them was Kato.

It was this Rolling Stone campaign that was the latest cause of the restlessness in Kato when I found him in the law office. The newspaper had exposed him and others to a generally unfriendly public. He was seeking legal advice on what to do.

I began to ask myself: how does it feel to live like a fugitive, always startled by seemingly ordinary things like the opening of a door or a loud phone ringtone somewhere? 

Although I had followed the debate on the homosexuality bill, I had never witnessed firsthand the difficult life that homosexuals go through. What if I wrote a story about them? Would it help highlight the plight of a section of the Ugandan society that is as human as any human?

The ideas of the story began to take shape. My first port of call was Giles Muhame, managing editor of Rolling Stone. I wanted to know if he believed he was doing the right thing.

“We need to protect children from being recruited into gay activities,” he said.

I tried to track down Kato through his lawyer.

“I will consult him before giving you his number,” said John Francis Onyango.

I pursued another avenue. I called a journalist at one of the Ugandan newspapers.

“I cannot give you their (gay community members) phone number,” I was told. “I have them but they told me not to give anyone.” 

I was to learn from the experience that the gay community in Ugandan trusts only a few, not even journalists, and that establishing contact with them is a process that requires both time and patience.

‘We live like fugitives in our own country,’ Kato told me in interviews after I had won his trust.

Although I am not a homosexual, I must admit I felt sympathy for Kato. Homosexuality is opposed by many in Uganda, literally making it impossible to know when and where one will be assaulted.

Indeed, as you read this, Kato is dead. The Ugandan police say he was hit on the head with a hammer, left unconscious in his house and died while being taken to a local hospital.

What does the manner of his death mean for the gay cause in Uganda? It’s a question I put to Maria Burnett, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“David's death is a huge loss for the human rights community,” she said. “We now hope for prompt police action. No matter what the motivation for David's killing, incitement to violence against LGBT people in Uganda must cease.”

Moses Odokonyero is an IWPR-trained reporter.